No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs SCOM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (12th)
SCOM
Ranking in Event Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 3.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 9.3%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.3%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server3.3%
Other87.4%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2317098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries.
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes We've set up alerts to notify us when performance deviates from the baseline we've configured for each resource. So, whenever that happens, we get an alert and can investigate immediately. So,…
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"There are several monitoring tools, but IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager is actually better than other competitors."
"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."
"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."
"The best part of SQL DM is the ability to customize alerts and counters. This allows our team to find an issue then alert on the issue at a granular level."
"SQL monitoring time has been dramatically reduced and our IT Infrastructure team has improved SQL maintenance and monitoring knowledge over time just by using SQL DM."
"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."
"We're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action."
"One of the things that it is used for is to detect anything that could possibly cause our systems not to function well, and it has helped us to determine that before anything has actually happened."
"SCOM will allow you to go from firefighting mode to a more proactive stance when finding issues."
"On this solution, the things we monitor are fine and perhaps other users will want more, but for our purpose and what we use it for, it's enough."
"The monitoring features are the most valuable. We have seen a major benefit from that so far."
"This solution saves us a lot of work because it reduces the effort that is required in order to start monitoring."
"It integrates with your Windows environment seamlessly and provides a lot of visibility on your Windows environment."
"In every case so far we managed to move from a slow reactive type of non-monitoring toward a proactive monitoring for different layers within the organization and real insights into their IT environment from different angles."
"It discovers the components automatically, which is a fantastic thing. The discovery works in an automatic way, and it has a dynamic way of discovering the components, assets, and applications. It doesn't require any manual intervention."
"Asset monitoring and auto alerts are the most valuable features of this product to me."
 

Cons

"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."
"I'm going to do an upgrade which may resolve my issues, but one area for improvement is its ability to handle the amount of data that we collect with it. We're likely one of the largest installations, with over 300 servers being collected with this product, and sometimes there are gaps. That would really be my only concern, in terms of how the data is collected and stored, for consistency."
"With basic SQL training in my history, I've found at times I needed to Google SQL counters, for example, to understand what was occurring or how to configure SQL DM to be useful."
"One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level."
"Tech support has been okay, not that great, but they made sure that we got what we were looking for."
"I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
"In terms of features that could be improved, I would say the agent integration into the operating system. We are having difficulties integrating Linux into some of the networking devices."
"All of the areas of reporting are very bad and need to be improved."
"On-prem network monitoring is something that could be improved drastically."
"Areas for improvement in my opinion are the resource footprint of the SCOM infrastructure side, the web console (drop Silverlight please!) and a few of the management packs."
"The price could be improved."
"The dashboard features are not user-friendly for our management team, only for the technical department."
"If they're looking for real-time, within-the-minute monitoring of servers from a console, then I would say that it falls short there."
"Super high cost for the 2012 version due to change to a CPU based."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Event Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
892,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
 

Also Known As

IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.